Glastonbury Elementary School Enrollment Up From Projections

School officials seeing an increase in elementary students, but numbers still falling.

GLASTONBURY — The number of elementary school students expected to arrive for the 2015-16 school year increased a bit from January projections.

The current elementary school enrollment is 2,372 students. That number is 22 students higher than school officials projected in January, officials told the board of education Monday night. With the increase, school officials will have to add another class.

Overall, there is a total decrease of 101 students from the 2014-15 kindergarten through fifth-grade population. That led to a reduction of five teaching positions in the 2015-16 budget. The board is monitoring the school population closely. When the school population gets close to 2,000, several elementary schools could close by 2018-19.

"As always, we try and balance enrollment changes with retirements and other staffing changes to maintain an outstanding group of teachers in our school system," Assistant Superintendent Matthew Dunbar said. "We continue to review enrollment and will make recommendations relative to paraprofessional support as we get closer to the opening of the school year."

Last summer, the board of education determined that if enrollment dropped to 2,000 or fewer elementary school students, it would trigger the closing of a school or schools.

Since 2008, enrollment in kindergarten through fifth grade has fallen by more than 400 students. Enrollment is projected to drop another 732 students by the 2019-20 school year.

If closings are necessary, Eastbury and Naubuc elementary schools will be the first buildings on the list. Eastbury has the lowest capacity of all the school buildings, and Naubuc is aging and has outmoded open classrooms.

Under the board's plan, if it is necessary to close two schools, redistricting would be done only once. The two-year window before closing a school would allow time for redistricting and for students and families to transition to new schools.